


we looked like giants

by MarauderCracker



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: F/F, Future Fic, Gen, this is about their friendship you demons, vague mentions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 22:40:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11792982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: In Napoleon’s eyes, Shao had always been something kinda mythical. A giant of sorts, not bound by the laws of the gangs or the frontiers of the Bronx. In Napoleon’s mind, Shao was magic.





	we looked like giants

In Napoleon’s eyes, Shao had always been something kinda mythical. A giant of sorts, not bound by the laws of the gangs or the frontiers of the Bronx. In Napoleon’s mind, Shao was magic.

 

“How you doin’, Mister Curtis?” asks Lou cheerfully, a tiny girl with her braids adorned with a multitude of shiny beads. She spends all of her afternoons in the store, staring wide-eyed at all the records she cannot afford. Occasionally Napoleon takes notice of an album she’s been eyeing with particularly big eyes and plays it on the store when she’s around. She reminds him of someone from back in the day --though he can never tell who, exactly-- and he likes seeing her happy. Shao is scowling at her now.

“Ain’t no mister, girl. Jus’ Curtis.” He keeps his brow furrowed until she responds with ‘okay… Curtis’, then shoots a golden-toothed grin at her. She scurries off to dig through the records at the back of the store. Shao’s smile flashes in Napoleon’s direction before his head is buried in a sketchbook again.

 

The first time Shao saves his life, Napoleon’s ten. In a decade or two he will realize that Shaolin was only a kid, too, a scared teenager asphyxiating in Fat Annie’s tight grip. Now, sewing the stab wound on Napoleon’s thigh with clumsy fingers, he’s a superhero. They are terrible stitches and eventually he will get a tattoo to cover the scar, but in the moment Napoleon thinks Shao is a pro. 

“You gotta give it a week. Two if you can, yeah? Then you grab a scissor or somethin’ like that, wash it with alcohol and cut them, got it?” Napoleon nods, bites his knuckles through the pain. 

 

Shao visits him every week while he’s in jail. He brings doodles and books and occasionally his walkman with him to show Napoleon a new song that he’s recorded off the radio. 

“I’ve got us a job when you get out,” Shao tells him one day, and shows him sketches of the mural they’re gonna paint on a record store. He tells Napoleon about the owner, a woman in her forties that wants Freddie Mercury, Aretha Franklin and Bob Marley to decorate the walls outside her store. “It’s gonna be great, and she wants to paint something inside too after we’re done. I’mma ask her if I can paint Grandmaster Flash.” 

 

After it all goes down, just before leaving for Annie’s, Shao turns to him. Napoleon is not expecting an apology and he’s not offered one. “If you go out now you’re gonna get killed,” Shao says. He points to a ratty couch. “There’s blankets ‘n shit on the second floor.”

He never tells him to leave and so Napoleon doesn’t. A week turns into a month and Shao gives him a crayon, tells him it’s the secret to spinning. A month turns into a year.

 

JC is seventeen and she’s Shao’s last remaining fan. She’s a little afraid of  _ Curtis _ , like all the kids in the neighborhood are, but she loves Shaolin Fantastic. She asks Napoleon to tell her stories about him every time she comes around, listens with utmost fascination. Hiding behind a magazine, Shao smiles a crooked grin as Napoleon paints him and the Get Down brothers as superheroes, describes their robbery of Annie’s club as an heroic quest for justice.

“I wish I could listen to their music… I bet they were awesome,” JC tells Napoleon, sighing. He chuckles, checks to make sure that Shao is listening when he says that Boo was the best of them all. Shao doesn’t bother lowering his magazine to say, “he is.”

 

He spends most of a year pining. Shao grabs him in a playful headlock and asks him “what got you down, little bro?” and Napoleon’s chest aches. Shao manages to find him the dopest leather jacket in all of the Bronx for his seventeenth birthday and Napoleon wears it everywhere, religiously, for months. 

The first time a guy --a guy his age, a guy that doesn't think of him as a younger sibling-- grabs him by the lapels and kisses him he's wearing Shao's jacket. The crush eventually fades away. 

 

The record store is small and rarely crowded, but Angela still insists she needs help with cleaning, with organizing the vinyls or sorting through the storage room. Angela, the most energetic woman Napoleon has ever known, insist she’s too old and tired to manage the store by herself, it’s just until he finds a job, and “you’re such a sweet kid, anyone would be lucky to hire you”. Eventually, helping out in exchange for a couple bucks and dinner turns into a full-time job. 

 

Napoleon is barely awake from a nap on the second floor when he hears the doors open, Annie’s voice ringing like a church bell. He scrambles for a hiding place, fits his whole body tiny as a ball into a cupboard and hopes nobody will think to check.

He listens for nearly an hour, as Annie’s heels pass by the room he’s hiding in and go back down the stairs, at the muffled roar of the city. He thinks of getting out through the roof, searching for Shao to warn him, but Annie might not be alone. The fear paralyzes him.

He hears Shao’s voice, Annie’s cackle, the bang of a gun. The house has been dead silent for a long time when he finally dares go downstairs. The only thing he finds is a paper bag dripping blood.

 

Only after a while does Napoleon learn of Yanery. She co-owns the store with Angela and they share the apartment upstairs too, but she must have another day job because she rarely is around. It's not until Napoleon comes in to help on a Saturday that he crosses paths with her, and she treats him as if she already knew him. 

“Angela’s told me so much about you,” she says, and smiles warmly at him, and offers him tea. He moves a couple boxes and swipes the floor through the afternoon, but most of the evening is spent talking with her about music, Shao and the colorful characters that frequent the store. 

 

He stays at the Temple, and convinces himself he’s holding down the fort for Shao. He makes sure that Shao’s records are far from where the water leaks through the roof, hides the spinning tables where no squatter or potential thief could find them. And yeah, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go (can’t go back to the Warlords, has no family to offer him a roof and warm food) so he stays, steals some food here and there, spins records on Shao’s tables and his chest caves from how badly this loneliness hurts. Eventually they come to knock the house down and Napoleon only manages to rescue the tables and a couple of records. The ruble swallows everything else.

 

Napoleon’s main hobby is trying to guess which one of their teenage customers have giant, embarrassing crushes on Shao. They usually come in trying to look nonchalant, throw him glances while they search through the albums on display and take twenty minutes to gather the courage to go up to the counter and ask him if this record is good or if he would recommend that artist. 

Shao tells them about musical influences and shit like that, always starts acting vaguely bored but quickly the sheer joy of speaking about music overtakes him and his hands start flying, he grins as he describes what listening to Herc felt like or gestures to mimic a wild dance-move that he witnessed once. “Disco was whack, but the clothes were fly as hell,” Shao says, and the kids take his word as gospel. Napoleon tries not to laugh. 

 

The news that Annie is dead hit the street with the strength of a hurricane. The Bronx shakes down to its foundations; cops and gangsters alike scrambling to get a bite of her territory while the body is still warm. They say she was killed just before dawn, and the entire Bronx already knows by noon. 

Napoleon has been bouncing from one abandoned building to another, but there is no safe place to stay in now. He’s heard that a rival gang killed her, that it was Cadillac, that it was Little Wolf. Nobody mentions Shao, nobody cares. By the time the night falls again, dozens of corpses have joined Annie's. 

It's in an alley ten blocks from Les Inferno that he finds Shao. The tourniquet on his leg is clumsy, the gun tucked under his belt still has all six bullets in it. He doesn't wake when Napoleon shakes him. He doesn't even stir when Napoleon searches his pockets with shaking hands, only sign that he's alive the faint rising and falling of his chest. Napoleon finds a paper that reads “Pier 34, West Side.”

That day he's really grateful that the Warlords taught him how to jumpstart cars. 

 

Yane and Angela are the fliest old people Napoleon’s ever met. “Here there ain't no prejudice, only music,” Angela says, and they hold hands and share flirty looks and call each other “my love” like nobody's watching. Napoleon sees the look of deep, melancholic  _ happiness _ that crosses Shao's face and wonders if that's what's twisting inside his own chest. 

“Curtis has told us a lot about you, chiquillo,” Yane tells him with a soft smile,and he doesn't take offense to being called a child. “You could use the spinning tables we've got upstairs, get movement back into those rusty hands, if you wanna,” she offers, pointing at the door at the back of the shop. Out of that same door comes Angela, carrying four mugs of coffee without spilling one drop.

 

He's gotten taller (he's probably taller than Shao by now, not that he can check if Shao doesn't wake up) but he's been living off scraps for months and Shao's dead weight is nearly impossible to carry. He stumbles through the door, praying that this address will be Shao’s plan B. First thing he sees is a white dude, so it's probably not. 

“Dizz! Dizzee!” The white dude, Napoleon realizes, looks vaguely familiar. He rushes to his side and helps Napoleon carry Shao to a mattress that's lying in the middle of the warehouse. A few feet away, Napoleon sees the older of the Kiplings is sitting up, barely awake. It's not plan B, but this just might have been a good idea, Napoleon thinks. 

“I don't know how long he's been out or how much blood he lost,” Napoleon tells me Dizzee when he asks, and realizes his voice is shaking. “Annie’s dead, the Bronx ain't safe,” he adds, almost wanting to apologize for bringing Shao here, but Dizzee cuts him off before he can. 

“You good.” One second of silence, Dizzee places his paint-covered fingers on Napoleon’s forearm. He realized his own hands are covered on Shao’s blood. Then Dizzee snaps into motion. “There's alcohol over there, find it,” he instructs, pointing in the right direction; then turns to the white guy to ask for something else. Napoleon finds himself frozen, unable to loosen his grip on Shao’s jacket. 

“Hey.” Dizzee's hand is one his forearm again. “He's gonna be okay, yeah? I promise.”

 

For a year they live in a tiny room with a pitiful bathroom and argue over who gets to sleep on the mattress on the floor and who gets to sleep on the uncomfortable couch they picked up from the street. When Napoleon turns nineteen, Angela tells him the spinning tables are his, but he better leave them at the shop until they find a place to live where they won’t get stolen within the week.

“The tables should be yours,” Napoleon tells Shao when Angela can’t hear them, and Shao smiles. “They offered already, I didn’t want them.” Napoleon doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t ask either.

 

They crash with Dizzee for a long time. Well, technically, they all crash with Thor, but Napoleon doesn’t much care about him. It’s not a grand life, has none of the sporadic luxuries the Warlords got, but for the first time in longer than he can remember, he’s not scared for his life every waking moment. It doesn’t last long, just enough for the wound on Shao’s leg to start scarring. It’s not two months after they’ve left that Napoleon gets busted with coke in his pocket. 

 

Napoleon’s been out of jail and working with Shao at the store for two years when Angela and Yanery announce they’re going to Mexico for a funeral and ask them to house-sit for a month. A month and a half later they come back, inform them that they’re going to take over the farm that Yanery’s aunt left her, and ask Shao if he still wants that full-time job he’d asked for so long ago. 

“Don’t forget to write, Curtis,” they tell Shao, and Napoleon has to hide under the counter to laugh when he sees Shao’s uncomfortable face as he accepts their hugs. “And you, kiddo,” they call at Napoleon, gesturing for him to come in for a hug too. “Cut your hair every once in a while, y cuida a nuestro Curtis, vale?”

“¿Cuando no?” Napoleon asks, grinning, and accepts Angela’s forehead kid and Yanery’s breath-taking hug. They help them load their suitcases into the back of a cab, and Shao throws an arm over Napoleon’s shoulders as they watch the car turn the corner. 


End file.
